And this terzanelle I wrote back in 1998 is my favorite thing of anything I have ever written:
------
A Woman I Came to Admire Six Maybe Seven Years Ago
in a Night Class Instead of Listening to the Lecture

In a gauze of delirum, I drain
about this woman. I would like to know
my thoughts are not centered in my brain

but open canvas boldly brushed and so
my beared lips stick to her nape and mesh
about this woman. I would like to know

her fire that may liquefy my flesh,
the sopping up of magma without harm,
my bearded lips stick to her nape and mesh

the fine white hairs upon her neck and arm.
This conjugation-double pulse we'd share
the sopping up of magma without harm.

We'd intertangle in burgundy, smear
the gradual deepening. In my chest
this conjugation-double pulse we'd share

a drink, a meal, a dance or two, served best
in a gauze of delirium. I'd drain
the gradual deepening in my chest:
all my thoughts not centered in my brain.

The Flesh is Weak

I want you alone—the you, I perceive:
the sight, the sound, the smell, the taste, the touch
all by myself when you aren't ever there
 
to serve as my fruit nor healing leaves. And
that's tough to measure, measure up against,
the sight, the sound, the smell, the taste, the touch
 
feels potential failure in every sense,
every lack of sense. A trick of the mind,
that's tough to measure, measure up against
 
starches, proteins, and fats. The body wants
when I hold it, hold it back, and deny.
Every lack of sense, a trick of the mind
 
that punishes. It is necessary,
or at least that's what I tell my body,
when I hold it, hold it back, and deny
 
the needs of the machine. The reasoning:
I want you alone—the you, I perceive,
or at least that's what I tell my body,
all by myself, when you aren't ever there.

Stronger Than Think

I want you now.  Let nothing hold us back:
the conscience, the worry, the doubt, the guilt
separating us from carnal ferment,
 
which fuels your mitochondrial furnances.
You're tough to please, to pleasure up against
the conscience, the worry, the doubt, the guilt.
 
You consider these when spoon feeding me
your grains, greens, and fruits my body sugars.
You're tough to please, to pleasure up against
 
the mental fidelity.  The brain wants
to harvest your words:  to balance healthy
your grains, greens, and fruits.  My body sugars
 
and freely gives—allows your neurons to
concentrate, remember, and learn about
the refined.  Glucose fed or overfed,
 
your thoughts I sustain, which refrain every
I want you now.  Let nothing hold us back—
the refined, glucose fed or overfed
separating us—from carnal ferment.

I like these a lot. And agree with Evans, the restraint and template drives the work rather than restricting it.

I forgot that the terzanelle had rhyming lines, and I remembered, incorrectly
that each of the nineteen lines needed to be ten -syllables long. I guess
they can be variable.

So no limit on syllables?

Man. Those last two give me heat. A lot of heat. I love the weaving of the words, the longing, the vibrancy.

Cold shower time.

I dug out my The New Book of Forms by Lewis Turco.
Lines can be any length.

OK, then.

It is challenging. No doubt about it.

Lullaby to Put Me To Sleep
After An Annoying Dream

When I think the best is behind me
that all beauty in life's been provided
I'm closing my eyes and refusing to see
my thoughts are astray and misguided

I'm closing my eyes and refusing to see
that the nostalgias were never this bright
for the wide world's there yet before me
and really, everything's really all right

really, really

Kinko the clown reference?

No. Ewh.

Keep 'em coming, Beachy. I'm enjoying them a lot You are giving a lot of punch to some of this phrasing.

Talk of writing poetry within forms comes up in this piece on Robert Frost's relationship with doomed Edward Thomas:

...North of Boston was a revolutionary work all right. In a mere 18 poems, it demonstrated the qualities that Frost and Thomas had – quite independently – come to believe were essential to the making of good verse. For both men, the engine of poetry was not rhyme or even form but rhythm, and the organ by which it communicated was the listening ear as opposed to the reading eye. For Thomas and Frost that entailed a fidelity to the phrase rather than to the metrical foot, to the rhythms of speech rather than those of poetic conventions, to what Frost liked to call "cadence". If you have ever listened to voices through a closed door, Frost reasoned, you will have noticed how it can be possible to understand the general meaning of a conversation even when the specific words are muffled. This is because the tones and sentences with which we speak are coded with sonic meaning, a "sound of sense". It is through this sense, unlocked by the rhythms of the speaking voice, that poetry communicates most profoundly: "A man will not easily write better than he speaks when some matter has touched him deeply," Thomas wrote.

Neither Frost nor Thomas claimed to be the first to think about poetry this way, but their views certainly set them apart from their contemporaries, who were in furious competition in the charged atmosphere of the years before the war. Strikers, unionists, suffragettes, Irish republicans and the unemployed were just some of the rebellious groups that England strove to tame in 1914, and might very well have failed to suppress had war not broken out. The young poets emerging at the same time were, in their own way, also in revolt against the decrepitude of Victorian Britain. The centre of their activities was the newly opened Poetry Bookshop in Bloomsbury, from where two rival anthologies were produced: the manicured but popular Georgian Poetry, compiled by the secretary to the first lord of the Admiralty, Edward Marsh, and the radically experimental Des Imagistes, edited by Ezra Pound. It took no time at all for these parties to quarrel: so exasperating and offensive did Pound find Georgian verse that he challenged one of its protagonists to a duel...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/ju ... mas-poetry

Beachy probably already knows all about this.

I write what I write, Rick. I don't look much to the works of others.
I do, on occasion, like to look at examples of poets, but not enough
to know the poets or their patterns of styles. I like an individual
poem or too.

The Frugal Shower

In Nordic shower, she drops to the drain
delicate fabrics and thin outerwear,
then steps herself in to drizzling rain,
just a quick, thin splash to moisten her hair.

Flips wide the cap for a dab of shampoo
coaxed into her palm, and, with her right thumb,
she clicks and lets the bottle drop through
to ceramic tiles, where her toes now strum

in the water, warm, beginning to pool.
She prays with her hands a soapy fan dance
then massages her hair. She feels a ghoul
if too much of her skull she might, by chance,

touch as she lathers it up and below
down her face into palms flat on her throat
overlapping. Her fingers splay like crows
flapping down each opposite arm to dote

at each wrist. There, they separate, take turns
back up under each arm to the chalet
of shoulders to circle away concerns
that knot deep and squall and heavily weigh

in her chest. The suds ski down Alpine slope
slalom over white mounds, then fingers cup
and rub an alluvial path of soap
slathering delta. And then, belly up

they return to the mane of her short hair
palming up a wet, white storm down her nape.
Flexing back to offer her spine some care,
her arms hostage around her waist to drape

and pull down a white water creek which splits
the bank cheeks. She flows slow around the bends
and down each loving stem until she hits
below the runoff surf where each foot ends.

She toes and agitates delicate wears:
a living washing machine, she's spartan
and clean, and now she's free of pressing cares,
saving her wallet and world once again.

The Velta Madrigal

she grows grass low, her shrublike gentle soul
outreaches, wants, and teaches peace shall be
then grooms and blooms fresh flowers just for me

she's health and vigor, glowing bright and whole
she gives of self, turns wealth over for free
she grows grass low, her shrublike gentle soul
outreaches, wants, and teaches peace shall be

Her measure wood will pleasure spirits full
in vats. Like valentines, our minds esprit
a present sent direct from Baltic sea
she grows grass low, her shrublike gentle soul
outreaches, wants, and teaches peace shall be
then grooms and blooms fresh flowers just for me

Urðarbrunnr Redux

Charged surfaces—we built and clung
to electrical words we feared
to discharge. We sang them unsung:
things were closer than they appeared.

Then, thinking thoughts thought by the young:
there's always time. So, we dogeared
cut legs out from under. Hamstrung:
things were closer than they appeared.

We got it backwards, cheek in tongue.
Providing no refuge, we peered
through rear-view mirrors at lands far-flung:
things were closer than they appeared.

Our world trees from a spring unsprung.
Our history respools—a Wyrd
fabric rethreads what was undone:
things were closer than they appeared.


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Tried writing a kyrielle, which is a poem form based upon the Kyrie litany found in Christian masses. I find octosyllabic lines fairly restrictive, but I do like the pair-couplet quatrains and especially the last refraining line throughout. When I see Kyrie, I always think Valkyrie, which uses the same sort of meaning, so this poem took on a few Norse images.

I like that one. The refraining line, especially.

I like that one, too. Thanks.

Also the "cheek in tongue" line.

Nearly 22,000 Google hits on "cheek in tongue."
Pity. I hadn't heard it before.